After Christopher Loring Knowles published his claims about the secret stratum of occult knowledge he believes H. P. Lovecraft possesses, Knowles accused me (or as he calls me, “Jason ‘It’s All About Me! Me!’ Colavito”) of failing to address his assertions on the evidence. Therefore, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to take a look at Knowles’s most famous work, Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes (Weiser Books, 2007). The subject of the volume is the influence of ancient mythology and Victorian occultism on comic book characters, and it covers many of the same streams of popular culture that I discussed in my earlier book, The Cult of Alien Gods (2005).

In that book, I received a great deal of criticism for what critics considered an unsupportable assertion that Western civilization had entered a phase of irrationalism and decline, which I attributed to the work of historian Jacques Barzun. In 2005, this claim seemed at odds with the triumphant nationalism of the United States (“We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”). Although contemporary readers no longer make that same criticism—circumstances having undermined triumphalism—I learned from the criticism, and pulled back on sweeping generalizations in later books. I mention this because Knowles’s book contains many sweeping generalizations, often about the way 9/11 demanded a return of pagan gods, that lack support, but these aren’t just used to frame his discussion. They seem to permeate the volume right down to the sentence level. This starts in the very first sentence of the preface: “One of the great American innovations of the twentieth century—besides comic books and superheroes—is the sanctity of childhood.” The Victorians, with their cult of childhood innocence, would obviously disagree on this point. Knowles, now 48 (judging by dates given in the text), then discusses his own “awful” 1970s childhood of sickness, trauma, and heavy doses of religion, along with the omnipresent comic books, from which he claims to have learned morality at the age of five. He cites Jack Kirby as an essential figure for introducing “occult” influences into comics, and we then move into the book proper. The following are my thoughts as I read each chapter.Chapter 1 Knowles’s signature style is an unedited clash of words that seem to say something but then break down upon analysis. In describing mid-2000s TV shows that featured superhuman powers, like NBC’s Heroes, he calls them “major cult hits,” which is oxymoronic. The superhero business, he says, is “in many ways bigger than ever”—but either it is or it is not. He chooses not to cite sources for his assertions in most places—and his assertions are strikingly broad. In the opening paragraphs, for example, he asserts that Batman’s popularity between 1989 and 1992 was due to the crack epidemic, that superheroes’ popularity was at a “low ebb” during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and that September 11, 2001 revitalized said heroes. Some of these claims may be true, but he asks us to accept them without any indication that he plans to explain how he measures superhero popularity. Is that among kids or adults? In terms of comic sales, comic readership, or adaptations in other media? The rest of the chapter discusses the economics of comics in the 1990s, which has very little to do with the putative subject of the book. The industry’s self-induced financial woes are not a proxy for overall superhero popularity, particularly since he then lists several blockbuster titles from the era, which contradict his claim that readers were uninterested during those years. The lack of any references or footnotes in this chapter makes this much worse. He claims, for example, that 1997’s Batman & Robin film nearly caused the collapse of the Warner Bros. studio. This seems completely false. The film took in more than $238 million worldwide on a budget of $140 million. Warner canceled the planed sequel based on underperformance, but the studio—then, as now, part of the Time Warner empire—was never in danger from the results of just one film.Chapter 2 The first chapter made little sense and did not establish a purpose for the book, but the second chapter seems to correct this by having almost no relationship to what preceded it. This chapter details the plot of the 1996 Kingdom Come series and abstracts from it the lesson that superheroes are substitute deities. This strikes me as the completely wrong way to introduce the subject—one might think that discussing Superman’s Christ-like qualities or the fact that Wonder Woman is a heroine born of Greek mythology might have made more logical sense as a starting point, particularly for readers, like me, who have only cursory knowledge of comics culture and very little memory of 1990s titles. Knowles, though, wants to work backward, tracing Kingdom Come to Frank Miller’s stylistic innovations in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), which is, he says, why 1990s comics “appealed to inner-city youths, many black and Hispanic, who were living through similar mayhem in their own neighborhoods.” These would be the same years when superheroes were also at their “lowest ebb,” if we take Knowles’s earlier chapters at their word—unless you follow Knowles’s logic to its conclusion and argue that fluctuations in comic sales from one year to the next are representative of instantaneous changes in culture. He claims that 1980s cities were uniquely miserable and therefore demanded the appearance of gods to help set them right. How the cities of the 1980s were significantly worse than those of the economically blighted 1970s (“Ford to City: Drop Dead”), or during the riots of the late 1960s, Knowles does not say. Instead, we are left to substitute his personal experiences and feelings for facts. He next suggests that the 2002 Spider-Man movie was a reaction to 9/11, even though the film was shot in the spring of 2001, and trailers for the film had to be modified to remove the World Trade Center after the attacks. “As we watch Spider-Man triumph over the forces of chaos and evil, in some sense the psychic damage done on that day is repaired.” This may have been the audience’s reaction—it is given only as his opinion—but it is coincidental. It wasn’t planned. He is right, however, that later superhero movies like Batman Begins reflected post-9/11 anxieties. However, this was hardly unique to superheroes. Action movies were even more explicitly tied to the War on Terror. He then lists many such films and now describes NBC’s Heroes as a “smash hit series.” It was a “cult hit” earlier in the book.Chapter 3 I am frankly baffled by the organization of this book. It is not telling a chronological story, nor has it established its premises. As we enter the third chapter, nothing has actually been said about superheroes as gods except in the most metaphorical of ways. The third chapter putatively deals with comic book culture and its influence, but here again the subject seems divorced from the supposed topic of the book. There are yet more issues with consistency. The 1990s were the “low ebb” for superheroes, yet here he traces “the era of the modern superhero film” to 1989’s Batman, pausing only to decry Joel Shumacher’s Batman & Robin on a direct path to Batman Begins (2005). No love for my personal favorite, Batman: The Animated Series? Or even the other superhero cartoons of the era? Not even Danger Mouse? TV did some good superhero work in the 1990s. Finally, as the chapter closes, we get the book’s mission statement, one that claims that comic book superheroes are an outgrowth of paganism:

When you go back and look at these heroes in their original incarnations, you can't help but be struck by how blatant their symbolism is and how strongly they reflect the belief systems of the pagan age. What even fewer people realize is that this didn't occur by chance, but came directly out of the spiritual and mystical secret societies and cults of the late 19th century—groups like the Theosophists, the Rosicrucians, and the Golden Dawn. These groups turned their backs on the state cult of Christianity and reached back in time to the elemental deities of the ancient traditions.

State cult? Reached back? Elemental? Knowles does not distinguish between genuine pagan survivals and neo-pagan beliefs re-created from literary sources. What does he mean by “elemental”? Does he mean it literally—nature gods—or figuratively—primal? He then cites Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval as proof that the Statue of Liberty is “really” the goddess Isis, reserving for this honor the book’s first footnote. This claim is entirely false, since according to the sculptor Liberty Enlightening the World was modeled on the Roman goddess of liberty, Libertas, to which he added the solar crown to represent the world, one ray for each continent. Yes, it looks like we’re in for some “interesting” material to come if Graham Hancock is an alleged authority on secret symbolism. Good thing this was written before America Unearthed.Chapter 4 With chapter 4 we change topic yet again and now go back to the beginning of history for a tour of Knowles’s version of pre-Christian pagan religions. It does not start out well, since the first “authority” he cites is “linguist Zecharia Sitchin,” though he does not come out and endorse the ancient astronaut theory as he complains that the Sumerian gods were all too human. Yes, pause to note how contrary to fact that is. Then he moves on to Egyptian religion, which he sees as the foundation for later myth cycles. He identifies the Egyptian gods as the Netjer and claims that “some” believe the word “nature” comes from their title since they control nature. “Nature” comes from natus, “to be born,” from a Proto-Indo-European root, according to most linguists. Knowles seems to have derived his claim from Normandi Ellis’s Dreams of Isis: A Woman’s Spiritual Sojourn (1995) or one of the books that copied from it, such as Nicki Scully’s Alchemical Healing (2003) or Scully’s and Linda Star Wolf’s Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt (2007). He does not cite sources. He also derives the word “horizon” from “Horus-zone,” even though the word originates in the Old French orizonte, tracing back ultimately to the Greek word horos, or boundary. Horus is a Hellenization of hrw, the word for falcon. That said, the “horus-zone” version has been bouncing around since at least the 1950s. Although modern scholars trace the word “hero” to the Proto-Indo-European word for protector, reconstructed as *ser, Knowles say “some” derive it from Horus (Heru). David Icke picked up the claim this year, but according to Knowles’s own blog, the “some” who made the claim are in fact Knowles himself. He provides no source in book or blog, though I imagine he must have picked it up somewhere. I find it hilarious that he cites William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) to describe what scholars “now” think about Egyptian religion! He also claims, following fringe views, that the ancients used the pyramids to initiate one another into mystery cults. Next he tackles Greece and Rome, arguably more important for understanding Western views of pagan mythology. He falsely claims that Helios was the Greek name for Apollo. It is not. Apollo keeps his name in both tongues and Helios (Latin: Sol) was a different god altogether, though one often conflated with Apollo in Hellenistic times. He then discusses Greco-Roman heroes like Odysseus, Achilles, and Jason. “To the Greeks, these heroes were essentially demigods.” Well, some were: Perseus and Heracles had Zeus for a father, but Jason and Odysseus were human. In fact, the existence of the heroes undermines the book’s title, for the semi-divine (literally or figuratively) Greek heroes are a closer template than the gods for superheroes. The gods rarely did very much on earth (Apollo killing Python is an exception), but the heroes engaged in the types of adventure later used as the template for comic book fare. Knowles believes that Greco-Roman myths were allegories and parables pointing toward the meaning of life, and he then asserts that the gods of old were “too fanciful” to be believed in, so the ancients turned to the more austere monotheism of Christianity. He claims that the Jews contributed moralism to heroic adventures, and he asserts that “Many theologians have pointed out the essentially solar nature of heroes like Elijah and Samson, both of whom are thought to derive from stories of Hercules.” This claim dates back to the nineteenth century and was refuted by the 1960s. I wrote about that a while back. He then cites Theosophist Alice Bailey to suggest that the life of Jesus is an astrological allegory derived from Babylonian astrology. He briefly outlines Norse mythology for obvious reasons: Marvel Comics made great use of it. The chapter stops there, and when the next one begins, we’ve moved forward eighteen century after Jesus, so I think I’ll leave this review here for the time being. So far, though, the book seems to be a grab-bag of loosely related ideas drawn from fringe literature and liberally slathered with a thick layer of adjectives indicating the author’s personal views, unleavened with the kind of deep research and careful primary source evidence needed to make his assertions convincing to those who don’t share his worldview.

What is the point in this book? Is Knowles completely oblivious to the fact that Stan Lee has basically made the entire latter half of his career an exercise in discussing how he and Jack Kirby drew on myths intentionally to create a sense of connection between readers and characters?

That would be why Thor is one of their most enduring characters. Or why the powers of the Fantastic Four are based on the classical elements. Or why DC's Shazam (formerly Captain Marvel) utters a magic word that gives him the wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury.

There is literally nothing occult about it (a word that means "hidden", Mr. Knowles); it's all been in the open since Stan's 70s whirlwind of media popularity.

Hell, Alan Moore's made an entire career out of overtly satirizing "occult" themes in everything he writes and even he acknowledges that the "god" he worships as an avowed occultist, Glycon, is a "complete hoax".

Knowles almost seems to be aping Moore so deeply that he actually believes the things Moore regards largely as performance art and acknowledges exist only in the mind of the believer.

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Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 06:54:47 am

Clarification:
I included Shazam in the list just to illustrate someone other than Lee and Kirby had exercised the same methods; not to confuse him with a Lee/Kirby creation. He's actually a Golden Age character from Fawcett Comics in 1939- predating anything Knowles has referenced in these chapters and illustrating how far back the overt mythological acknowledgment really goes.

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spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 06:49:33 am

I've got a similar book by Kripal (Mutants and Mystics). I've browsed it, haven't read it yet, but from the little I've seen, Kirby is also integral there, FYI.

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EP

8/21/2014 08:51:50 am

By the way, Kripal is the Rice chair I've been mentioning who writes blurbs for Knowles's books (thereby, at least in the ideal world, undermining his own academic credibility).

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spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 09:11:14 am

I had heard good things about the book, and so when I saw it for sale at a conference (as it was published by a uni press), I bought it. Once it arrived at home, I was a bit less taken with it as I leafed through. I'll get to it at some point, maybe.

EP

8/21/2014 09:22:16 am

Kripal is a representative of what we may call the "are you even trying?" school of thought.

spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 09:27:53 am

Most books on occulture topics by academics seem to fall into that category.

EP

8/21/2014 09:40:27 am

Just out of curiosity, could you give some examples of the books you don't think fall into this category?

spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 10:41:51 am

Barkun's Culture of Conspiracy
Matheson's Alien Abductions
Peebles' Watch the Skies as a basic UFO history, so long as one also reads Moseley's insider's look Grave-Robbing Ufologists. Ufologists do not like Moseley or his book, and while he was a prankster, his chronicle work is more the reason I suspect. Anyone who wants to talk about the "serious" years before the 1970s needs to read Moseley and realize the community has always been loopy, including the "serious" people who persisted among the loopy.

Benson, Saler, and Moore's UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth has one good idea in it that IMO was not sufficiently worked out or expanded upon, and I would cynically wonder if the thin volume was completed so as to be on shelves for the 50th anniversary. It was one of the inspirations for me to do some work on my own on this as it was underwhelming less for the approach than the execution.

Fantastic Archaeology by Williams. I like Ken Feder's Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, but it is a very effective textbook aimed at beginning readers, whereas Williams' book is a historical examination, so I find the latter more useful to me now.

The Contactee literature, by contrast, is usually quite good, because such groups fit very nicely into traditional anthropological and sociological confines of New Religious Movements. The edited volume the Gods Have Landed is important, but there has been a lot of literature (some by the same authors) since that I haven't examined.

The Baylor study and its accompanying volume Paranormal America is important, but I was underwhelmed.

On the other hand, Hufford's The Terror that Comes in the Night is an important work. I also like Nutini and Roberts' Bloodsucking witchcraft in terms of dealing with a different sort of night attacker, but it is purely within traditional anthropology, and it is also a bit specific.

On the cryptozoology side of things, I like Daegling's Bigfoot exposed. I haven't read Buhs' book cover to cover yet (I may soon), so I don't have an opinion on it, and while I've heard Brian Regal talk about his book and it sounds intriguing, same deal. I'm part way through Abominable Science and I'm not sure what I think.

Not exactly in occulture, but a volume I recommend highly nonetheless is Mayor's The First Fossil Hunters. Haven't worked all the way through the sequel yet.

EP

8/21/2014 11:07:59 am

This is really useful, thanks! Though I guess I meant to place more emphasis on the 'occult' in 'occulture' (and most UFO and cryptid stuff doesn't really qualify)...

spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 11:30:17 am

Other than certain specific subjects, that's not of real interest to me.

And I would argue it all falls into together. The proof of that is how routinely those interested in such topics interweave them.

Or do we need Jason to do another post on how the ultradimensional Nephilim have left physical traces as Bigfoot, Paracas conehead skulls, and North American giants AND are behind the Illuminati conspiracy AND ruled Mu AND therefore can be glimpsed in occult lodge rituals of the 20th century AND are the Reptilians AND therefore Lem and Crowley or whatever.

That's why I like Barkun so much. He was the first serious writer I've ever seen who captured that aspect of this stuff.

There is a mountain of material out there if you want to know what Early Modern mystics theorists thought about Kabbalah, or how Victorians took those old texts and slammed them together with poorly understood material from the fringes of the British Empire or from the new fields of anthropology, archaeology, and folklore (and unfortunately not entirely stripping out the race-based nationalism of the period).

But honestly, that's just another branch of comparative religion, often taking on a theological cast, IMO. And that just doesn't interest me. Never mind how much of it is a form of performance art.

spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 11:33:47 am

And I'll give some of the voices recently discussed here, this:

Art figured that out long before history and academic scholarship did. Be it R.A. Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy, the Discordians, or any number of other folks, fiction captured that smash-up nature so much better than academic studies have. Probably because if one writes about that, unless one does it well, it is all too easy to be mistaken for a crank.

EP

8/21/2014 11:38:28 am

Oh, I agree completely that the phenomena fall together (especially in their contemporary manifestations)!

And I'm well aware of how much stuff there is out there. I was just curious about your personal take on who does and doesn't "try". To the extent that there is a good version of what Kripal is doing, *that* is what I'm interested in (intellectual history, genealogy of ideas, etc.).

I'm reading Barkun right now, actually... Not sure what I think yet...

Zach

8/21/2014 08:28:15 am

Thank god I've never read this book. As a lifelong comic book fanboy, this is insulting to my intelligence of the history of superheroes and comics in general. Also, I don't know how far you are into the book Jason, but I would bet the reason why he said Jack Kirby brought in occult influences is due to the fact that he was influenced by the books Chariots of the Gods and Childhoods End when he was helping create the more cosmic stories of both Marvel and DC. All you have to do is read his biography or any history of comics on the matter. Comics involving the celestials, the eternals, the inhumans, and the new gods are directly inspired by them. And the reason why Kirby did this is the same reason Lovecraft incorporated aspects of theosophy into the Cthulhu mythos -- what they knew as bullshit science and theories make for great fiction. Next, he will be saying Steve Ditko was part of a real life Satanic cult, and that is what influenced him to create Dr. Strange, despite the fact that Ditko is a strict Objectivist.

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Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 08:45:45 am

From the arguments Knowles presents in these opening chapters, I'm wondering if he actually knows anything about comic books at all. Everything he covers seems to be centered around comic book films- which by and large ignore the decades of backstories and origin premises for the sake of fitting into an acceptable feature length.

The couple books he does reference seem covered in the least sensible manner possible. Like he read a Wikipedia synopsis and looked for the symbology behind that instead.

It shouldn't take a "symbologist" to see that Kingdom Come was an overt attempt to parallel an Armageddon tale by inserting those heroes in those roles. I'm not sure how he thinks The Dark Knight Returns symbolizes inner-city youth struggles at all. It's a book about an old man coming out of retirement and doing the same thing he's always done- just in a more brutal fashion.

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Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 08:48:45 am

^^ Meant for reply to Zach...

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EP

8/21/2014 08:55:08 am

"I'm wondering if he actually knows anything"

Knowles cannot write a paragraph without making one feel this way. After a while, however, "wondering" no longer captures it.

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spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 09:12:54 am

The wiki bio has several credits for him in the comics industry.

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Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 09:34:27 am

Well, four:
- A story in a single issue of Negative Burn from Caliber comics in 1996
- A 4-issue miniseries about angels from Sirius Entertainment in the same year
- pencils on an 80 page adaptation of a Saturday Night Live cartoon spin-off in 2000
- an unspecified credit on something called Prime8:Creation for which ComicCollectorLive.com lists him as one of eight artists

So, I suppose he knows something about comics... or at least about drawing a few.

spookyparadigm

8/21/2014 09:26:46 am

I was reading an interview with Miller yesterday (Wired, I think?) that points to high crime in NY, and Miller's specific experiences with it, as a major source for DKR. Miller had been mugged three times in a month living in Hell's Kitchen. He got sick of it, and began preparing to move to LA. While his wife was out in LA looking for a place to live, he got mugged again, and as all he had in his pocket was a cheque, he freaked, started screaming at the mugger who ran away.

Which sounds EXACTLY like the middle section of DKR, with people beginning to follow the Batman's example and stand up for themselves.

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Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 10:15:19 am

It certainly does. Miller also credits influences in the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact and his own experience in aging, though. None of which seems to quite justify Knowles' assertion that it "appealed to inner-city youths, many black and Hispanic, who were living through similar mayhem in their own neighborhoods.”

That sort of statement kind of needs actual demographic data to support it.

The case can certainly be made that DKR did in fact help Batman's popularity, but it was hardly the only comic at the time drawing on violent themes in cities. Watchmen comes to mind, and actually prominently features a black youth who reads comics amidst the violence. Why not mention that instead, since Knowles seems to be trying to imitate Moore anyway?

EP

8/21/2014 10:18:33 am

Didn't Marvel try to cash in on this very demographic with Luke Cage right around that time? And didn't it kinda fail? (I know next to nothing about comics... But if even I know things that clash with Knowles's account...)

Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 10:41:53 am

Sweet Christmas! You're half right.

Cage was actually a 70s creation to capitalize on the Blaxploitation film genre. His initial run was canceled in September '86. The same month the first Watchmen issue dropped, even.

Only Me

8/21/2014 02:13:06 pm

Clint, you and EP are both correct. Cage started as a Blaxploitation genre character, but recent developments have him as a harder, edgier character. He speaks more of the modern "Ebonics" and has a "Gangsta for Hire" look to him. Regrettably, this means he uses adult-themed language, such as the following quote, "Who’s gonna fuck with me ? I’m the scariest nigga ever was !” *

*Found at www.writeups.org

EP

8/21/2014 02:53:06 pm

Wait, what's wrong with adult-themed language? I use it all the time and I'm the hardest motherfucker that ever did live! :)

I actually bought and read this book years ago and remember absolutely nothing about it. None of it stuck. A lot of superheroes have a similarities to mythology, mostly because comic book writers borrowed heavily from it. I think there is an interesting discussion if super heroes serve the same function as mythology in our culture, but it's as if he didn't really think out his topic or do any research whatsoever.

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Shane Sullivan

8/21/2014 11:32:04 am

"I think there is an interesting discussion if super heroes serve the same function as mythology in our culture, but it's as if he didn't really think out his topic or do any research whatsoever."

I wonder if he was at all inspired by Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable.

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EP

8/21/2014 11:41:02 am

Nah, man. Gotta go deeper. At least all the way to Marshall McLuhan (the fairy godfather of today's pop-culture-is-serious-business pseudo-intellectuals).

.

8/21/2014 12:56:55 pm

people can be deleated for simply bringing up basic communication theory ideas like those McLuhan has
popularized? this is all Anti-McLuhan cult trying to gang
rumble like street punks with aging McLuhan cult folks?
trekkie me got dragged into this because i feel that space
communicators may be eventually possible. its not Stalin
verses Hitler as we are all caught in the middle like a repeat
of the Weimar Republic? I am a Robert Heinlein fan. I grok.

NEWTON's "TOE" (theoryOFeverything) IS EINSTEIN's "TOE"
THE THEORY NEEDS A BIO-CHEM EXPLANATION THAT
EXTENDS INTO HOW ANIMALS & HUMANS COMMUNICATE.

Universal Law: Principles that are necessary for the operation of this system of universes. They cannot be altered or done away with. All universal laws were created at the time of creation and are now in existence whether we have discovered them or not. Also known as Natural Law

Universal Mind: A collection of all of the knowledge, experience, principles and objects of reality, either animate or inanimate expressed as a coherent whole. Thought to be accessible as a source of knowledge. Sometimes referred to as the Mind of God, Divine Mine or Cosmic Consciousness.

EP

8/21/2014 01:23:03 pm

Admit it - you come here to dump you random, irrelevant trash because every other blog has banned you. I see no other reason for you to post any of this drivel on Jason's blog, of all places.

Shane Sullivan

8/21/2014 04:33:49 pm

Hey, we already know he associates comic book superheroes with Theosophy. Maybe he thinks the stories contain cosmic truths (cosmic certainties?) downloaded from the Akashic Cloud.

(Speaking of the roots of superheroes, if he so much as mentions the Scarlet Pimpernel, I'll eat my hat.)

EP

8/21/2014 04:43:30 pm

He does mention it, but no more than that.

Shane Sullivan

8/21/2014 06:25:27 pm

Fortunately, I was prepared for this. I bought one of these:
http://i.imgur.com/WSUdi.jpg

EP

8/21/2014 06:28:08 pm

Fact: Christopher Knowles thinks that Roman legionnaires were the original straight-edge kids. Like, it's not a metaphor, he thinks that's where straight-edge comes from.

Only Me

8/21/2014 01:23:33 pm

Unless he addresses it later in his book, I like how Knowles completely skips over the fact characters like DC's Captain Marvel and Johnny Thunder appealed to younger audiences due to a child's desire for "wish fulfillment".

How would he explain The X-Men, those not so merry mutants Stan Lee used to illustrate the social conflicts arising from fear of the "other"? How about Machine Man, one of many characters that tackled the idea of artificial intelligence?

Does Knowles also not understand that stories like Beowulf have long been considered the archetype of superhero tales? Or that Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster, originally told the story "The Reign of the Superman", in which the main character was a bald villain possessing enormous telepathic power...directly inspired by Nietzsche's Übermensch?

Comic books are really just modern myth-making, entertaining tall tales that, yes, draw influence from a multitude of sources.

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EP

8/21/2014 01:50:13 pm

He doesn't really talk a lot about the X-Men. Which is surprising since there is a case to be made that Marvel's conception of mutants actually is influenced, directly or indirectly, by some occult material. I'm thinking primarily of Urantia. Of course, since I know nothing about comics, it's merely a conjecture.

And I think Knowles's ill-conceived quarrel with Jason revealed that he doesn't really know what to do with the idea a work may be influenced more than one source. Hence the need to construct elaborate chains of descent, where everything ends up traced back to some poorly understood (and possibly supernatural) ancient wisdom tradition.

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Zach

8/21/2014 02:18:25 pm

@ EP

That's actually funny considering that Pauwels and Borges in their book Morning of the Magicians actually wrote a whole section on people with mutations that might as well be an essay on the X-Men, due to how they describe it. The problem is that the first English translation of the book came out in 1963, which is the same year that the X-Men was published -- and I'm pretty sure Stan Lee and Jack Kirby never knew French. But I agree with you EP, Urantia must have definitely an influence, and possibly even Doom Patrol if it's claim by Arnold Drake is correct that Lee borrowed the idea from him. But I still think that all of them -- Pauwel and Borges especially -- completely took the idea from Shiras's 1953 novel "Children of the Atom." It's completely obvious that they did.

EP

8/21/2014 02:26:26 pm

You mean Bergier, not Borges, I presume :)

I also must confess that I have a nagging recollection of something serving as a possible source for Urantia and also being even more Marvelesque... But I can't remember what it is. The idea is basically that humanity undergoes these leaps in biological development, which begin with small groups of people.

Another work that's totally X-Men meet Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland is John Wyndham's "The Crysalids" (1955). Check it out if you haven't read it.

Zach

8/21/2014 02:33:20 pm

@ EP

Yeah I did. I thought it was something like that. Maybe I should've bothered to look his name up. Lol

Only Me

8/21/2014 02:37:35 pm

@EP

The closest I can think of would be the story "Odd John" by Olaf Stapledon. It may not be what you're thinking of, as it was published in 1935.

EP

8/21/2014 02:47:28 pm

@ Only Me

No, it's either spiritual or (purportedly) nonfiction. I want to say I'm thinking of Bucke's "Cosmic Consciousness" and the whole ethos it exemplifies, but now I'm not sure how informative such a claim is in considering the influences on something as specific as the X-Men.

Space Ghost, The Herculoids, The Galaxy Trio, The Mighty Mightor, Birdman, Sampson and Goliath and The Impossibles.

That means the 1980s rebirth of Space Ghost and The Herculoids, and the Ruby-Spears produced Thundarr the Barbarian will go unnoticed, too.

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EP

8/21/2014 05:33:59 pm

You're forgetting DragonballZ

Only Me

8/21/2014 06:12:02 pm

I don't know if Knowles could handle anime like the Dragonball series.

I don't know what this "Knowles" is, but it sounds just like Raditz.

EP

8/21/2014 06:23:30 pm

Ok, how 'bout Darkwing Duck, then?

Shane Sullivan

8/22/2014 06:17:53 am

There was also an X-Men cartoon, and Todd MacFarlane's Spawn- though, being ten when it first aired, I didn't watch the latter until years later.

EP

8/21/2014 02:20:21 pm

Guess what, everybody? Knowles has has added another, fourth Law to Knowles's Laws:

"Those who can, do; Those who can't, teach; Those who can't do either, troll."

Not sure if the ambiguous coherence of this new Law is meant to be "ironic" or whatever. But would it be presumptuous to think that he has us in mind? (Gosh, I'm so flattered!)

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Shane Sullivan

8/21/2014 04:22:53 pm

" ... he does not come out and endorse the ancient astronaut theory as he complains that the Sumerian gods were all too human."

Funny he should mention that; a few weeks ago, I was reading about a tabletop RPG called Godsend Agenda, where the players assume the roles of spandex-clad superheroes. Here's twist, though: The heroes inherit their powers from--are you ready for it?--extraterrestrials who visited the earth in the distant past posing as gods!

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Only Me

8/21/2014 04:39:46 pm

"Greatest American Hero" anyone? I can't be the only guy who remembers William Katt flying into buildings and other obstacles after receiving his superhero suit from aliens!

Remember, DON'T LOSE THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL!

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air
I never thought I could feel so free
Flyin' away on a wing and a prayer
Who could it be?
Believe it or not, it's just me.

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EP

8/21/2014 04:44:11 pm

Visually, this post has too much . in it...

Only Me

8/21/2014 04:49:06 pm

Damn, EP. That was harsh! Maybe I will have to roll for anal circumference, since you just put your foot in my ass. No more sharing of childhood memories with you :(

EP

8/21/2014 04:53:23 pm

Your childhood memories? You mean Greatest American Hero? Or a foot in your ass? :)

Only Me

8/21/2014 05:17:02 pm

Greatest American Hero.

Leave my ass out of this.

Weirdo :)

Clint Knapp

8/22/2014 03:10:52 am

I was too young to have seen its original run (unless toddler-me happened by the TV), but I finally saw The Greatest American Hero a few years ago during one of those rare times the SyFy channel does something worthwhile.

I was especially fond of the genetic-engineering themed episode "Heaven is in Your Genes" in which Andre the Giant plays a nameless monster (channeling his inner Lou Ferrigno while wearing a costume no more elaborate than white coveralls and dirt smudges on his face). The rest of the show was not so memorable on a scene-by-scene basis, but over all the bumbling Superman inversion kept me entertained for days.

Sorry, you can't have Danger Mouse or his compatriots Count Duckula and Bananaman as these are British in origin and American. They were imported for a newly revamped MTV product called Nickelodeon, and were part and parcel of their early lineup, before the likes of "You Can't do that on Television", and Rosie O'Donell.